Category: Luxury

If, like us, you don’t watch much television and, therefore, effectively shield yourself from the indignities of all the marketing/messaging/propaganda used to sell products and “lifestyles,” when you come face-to-face with the fire-breathing beast, your ignorance of Basic Ideas might take your breath away. It did ours. We were forced from our hermetically sealed cave...

Employing a staff, you see, Betters all mankind, not just me. Look, the man who drives my car Was born unlucky, not a star Like me and Angie, Anne and Mike, All us worthy of your thumbs-up “like.” Meet the girl who cleans my home: Born unlovely, brownish gnome With moles unsightly, hair unkempt, She’s never...

New information came to light this week about the quarters our top Generals enjoy at taxpayer expense. The Pentagon acknowledged that even though the Offense Department’s budget is slated for a 20% cut that will cost 800,000 people their job, important war planners like General John Kelly of U.S. Southern Command live rent-free in mansions,...

Despite our vigorous protests to the contrary, what Americans value more than “family” is quantity. We are a nation of super-sized dreck. As our population eclipses 300 million — bigger and better every day — we are less inclined to appreciate (or even acknowledge) anything that is accomplished on a small scale. “Go big or...

Thank you to the Dads and Moms, toiling at home or in an office, on a truck or in a field. Thanks also to the Thais and Turks and Filipinos and Sri Lankans, the Malaysians and the Indonesians, the Bangladeshis and the Vietnamese, and of course the Chinese, who make our clothes and shoes and socks....

I saw a beggar (and his dog) on Sunset Boulevard the other day. They — well, the human — were soliciting cash donations for “food” from pedestrians. A well-meaning but foolish fellow threw a few bucks at the doleful couple, thereby cleansing himself of whatever sins he had committed in the name of acquiring his...

The first section — the “A” section — of the Los Angeles Times, focuses on international news and domestic stories of national interest. It is here that one learns how ugly and cruel life is for most of our brothers and sisters living in places other than America and Europe. The next section is the...

In a gesture of international goodwill — and because there’s a big trade meeting coming up — the Chinese government recently shut down an enormous bazaar in Shanghai that exclusively offered counterfeit goods. Merchants and shoppers admitted to reporters that the closure would be momentarily inconvenient but that the bazaar would soon move to another...

According to a series of recently published newspaper stories, Thomas Kinkade, the enormously successful painter, isn’t as nice of a man as his collectors and business associates believed him to be. This normally wouldn’t be much of a revelation except that in Kinkade’s case the artist trades heavily on his “Christian values” and “core beliefs,”...

Most of us toil at jobs were not crazy about, dedicating a large portion of our life on Earth to laboring at tasks that may or may not satisfy our spiritual hunger. We recognize that we have a finite amount of time to be alive — and that time may be shorter than we imagine...

Chapter Of The Week

The business was not how the average person who was not in the business would imagine it. Sheila wouldn’t understand, that was for sure. She never did.

Certainly, he hadn’t really understood how it all worked before he became a part of it. People don’t really know what they don’t really know is how he would put it. Yes. That was how it was. A case of not really knowing until you’ve really experienced it….

Recent Thoughts

New Discoveries

Originally a Comedy Central documentary-style series that morphed into an HBO Digital series spearheaded by Zach Galifinakis, “Brody Stevens: Enjoy it!” is simultaneously funny, disturbing, encouraging, entertaining and sort of heartbreaking. “Brody” is Steven Brody Stevens, an eccentric but lovable “comedian’s comedian” who suffers from bi-polar disorder (a diagnosis he ultimatey rejects.) The series, which...